Microsoft halts furthur development of Photoshop, Illustrator killer.Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer (or Acrylic) is seen as the first serious attempt by Microsoft to dethrone Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks.
But before the Graphic Designer could win hearts of design professionals, Microsoft has applied brakes on further development.
In an interview with ZDNet Australia, Wayne Smith explained that Microsoft was taking so long to bring Graphic Designer to market because the company had put "a lot" of the development work for the application "on pause", until sibling products and Vista could be finalised.
The Expression range is built on WinFX model that will be introduced with Windows Vista. Microsoft will therefore wait wait for WinFX to ship in its final release, and then to do a couple of months of stabilisation work.
Some call Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer a blend of Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop as it allows creation of both vector and raster images in the same document.
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Source: Microsoft pauses work on Adobe rival